


Nothing Beside Remains

by skeptique



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, DTST Challenge, Do The Scary Thing Challenge, Gen, M/M, Malfoy Manor, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:00:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26997103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeptique/pseuds/skeptique
Summary: There's beauty in the world, and Draco Malfoy does not think it is anywhere near Malfoy Manor.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 9
Kudos: 34





	Nothing Beside Remains

It’s a cool, crisp autumn day in October, the kind with an underlying bite in the air that reminds him winter is almost here. He walked these same grounds in Wiltshire all his life. Now he sees long grass, yellow from neglect, stalks bending in the wind as far as the eye can see. All the places they used to grow potion ingredients have been left fallow. There were once neat rows. Now the only ordering principle seems to be the hawthorn roots choking out the rest. The garden is a disgrace, with blighted blood-red roses and more thorny bramble than greenery. He feels nothing surveying what time has done.

Some of this destruction started before the War, Draco just didn’t fix it.

The interior of the Manor has fared little better. The house-elves had fled. Draco couldn’t blame them. He would have done the same if he could have. His parents had, after the trials. They send him long letters complaining about the heat and other expats in Marbella and the Galleon exchange rate. Sometimes he replies. Sometimes he leaves the letters unopened for weeks in the front hall.

There is a long moment before the sconces light all along the cavernous entryway. For a few seconds there’s nothing but the click of his boot heels, muffled somewhat by the thick dust. All the white and grey marble flooring is cracked in the entire first floor, lines radiating from under his feet in the entry. It smells of damp more than rot, as he expected. Draco wonders if perhaps he’s buried the feelings so deep that he can no longer access them.

The half circle of decorative statues haven’t moved, but they’ve been draped with white sheets. As if that will cover up the fact they are all damaged and not worth repairing. Some Death Eaters had used them for target practice, when they were behaving. Draco tries not to think of the times they hadn’t been. He drapes a slipped sheet back over the statue of Merlin. His cheek is cracked. That was Nagini’s doing.

Each door has remained closed as far as he knows. Draco pushes them open by hand, only to encounter the same. Brief darkness, then the steady flickering of a candle which reveals another decaying room. A grand piano warped by rainwater, bloated and cracking along the seams. Moth-eaten silk curtains. Signs someone has fled with the silverware and gold-edged pink china sets. Broken windows in several rooms, smashed inward and outward.

It’s all very ‘ruin of the empire’, and Draco tries to survey it neutrally.

Neutrality gets that much harder when he climbs the spiralling front staircase to their rooms. The memories flood in unbidden. Here’s a light and a stark reminder that he had been a boy in these halls. The nursery where house-elves had changed his nappies and his parents had sung him lullabies was untouched, as if they had shut it something like twenty years prior and set it in amber. The wainscotting is bright, the wallpaper a tasteful patterned baby blue. His crib is still there, as is the bassinet.

Heart in his throat, Draco moves on to his own room. Similarly preserved. His bedroom is larger than the one in his current flat, so he takes a moment to turn in a small circle. The room is too dark. His father shouldn’t have given in to Draco’s fifth year impulse to paint the entire room black, with tiny moving pinpricks of yellow and white like stars. But that year his father was distracted and indulgent. In retrospect, it is a sign of what was to come.

A Falcons pennant, Slytherin banner, and a silver clock with the family crest are the only things that hang on his bedroom wall. He wishes there were some other sign of his personality, like a piece of art or a book that wasn’t from the family library.

The floors are still a warm maple, with a scorch mark where he’d dropped a candle while reading at night. The wood matches the shelves all lined up with Hogwarts textbooks and the writing desk that had been a replica of his grandfather’s. Draco leans over his desk to open the window and it glides open like it has been waiting for his return. He can see even more of the wildness of the land from this vantage point. Yellow and brown have overtaken everything; it is all dead or dying.

He closes the window when enough air has rushed in to make it feel less stuffy. His trunk and closet should be empty, but he checks both, just in case he missed something.

The only room he doesn’t check is his parents, mostly because he hadn’t been allowed in their wing of the Manor unless it was an emergency when he was a child, and he had never got to be an adult here.

Draco lets his hand drag along the wallpaper, leaving streaks in the yellowing grime. His fingers dance over the bannister as he goes down the stairs, watching motes of dust plume upward. He holds onto the front door so long, he felt like he might not shut it.

Maybe he should do as his parents bid him and restore the glory of the Manor. The money is there, after all. The time is there too, should he wish to contract out most of the stonemasonry, tiling and window repair. It would only take an Owl from his Ministry desk to a builder and then to Gringotts.

No. If the Malfoy family and all the other purebloods had been more invested in fairness than pride, perhaps it would have remained his home. As it was, it could stand as a monument to them all. This is a place where evil was done. There is no glory in it, just rot and ruin.

Draco apparates away.

“How was it?” Harry asks. He stands at the stove stirring a stew. Something tomatoey from the smell of it. Usually as soon as he was through the door of their Linden Garden flat, Harry would be all over him.

“The place is a wreck,” Draco says. His voice is creaky and faint with disuse. He hasn’t spoken to anyone since he left this morning.

Draco still feels a little melancholy and high-strung so he appreciates the space from Harry. He appreciates the time to consider the cheery beige of the walls, and the plush ocean blue welcome mat as he kicks his shoes off, leaving them in the middle of the floor instead of on the black shoe rack.

He appreciates that the flat is very Muggle, although Harry’s concession to him is that it’s well-appointed. He appreciates the haphazard piles of paper, the photos of Teddy and a canvas Luna painted for a housewarming present. He sees the little wizarding knickknacks Pansy bought them on her travels. This is his home now.

He walks up behind Harry and lets himself lean just a little, the side of his face resting on Harry’s shoulder blade.

“You alright?”

“Yes,” Draco says automatically. His reflex has always been to make everything seem fine. Then he changes his mind. “No. I—I’m not. It was difficult being back there. I knew it would be.”

“But it was important,” Harry says, because he understands. Harry puts down the spoon and makes Draco sit at the table. Harry has them eat his Silician aubergine stew. Fills up their water glasses. It’s only when they finish eating in silence that Harry folds Draco carefully into his arms and kisses the top of his head.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! More about how this came to be my personal challenge at [tumblr](https://skeptiquewrites.tumblr.com/post/631902375869906944/nothing-beside-remains)


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